Words from the Dead
by Lady Josephina
Summary: Even though she's already dead, Ellie Burrows wants the world to know about what went on in the Vannacutt asylum. This is her story
1. Chapter 1

_Nov. 13th 1929_

_Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute_

_Patient File: (B)_

_Name: Burrows Elizabeth A._

_Number: 75160B_

_Age at Admission: 16 yrs._

_Symptoms: hallucinations, paranoia, self mutilation_

_Notes: Patient suffers from schizophrenia and acute depression. ECT and/or lobotomy recommended.  
Use restraints liberally if patient harms self. Time in Saturation Chamber may be required._

That's me. Or that was me. It feels so long ago. When I first crossed those doors, there was only a fragment of hope left in me. I still thought I could be saved. Someone could make the voices stop.

Was I ever wrong.

Incase you haven't figured it out already, I'm dead. I died in these walls along with the others. Seventy years ago in the great fire that burned this place alive. We're all still here...

I wander these crumbling halls night and day. I don't see any of the others but I know they're here. I don't like to see them. The fear and hatred of this place has warped them into something horrible. As if a chasm to hell opened in basement, releasing its menagerie of demons.

I would have become one of them if it were not for something left behind.

A typewriter. The only machine not used for pain in this vile pit. The humidity has kept the ink preserved, but my paper supply is running out.  
So I have to use what I can. Even spirits get bored. 

You might wonder how a "ghost" can use a typewriter. There's alot more to spirits than what you think. We **can** manipulate our environment.

Its the only way we get noticed.

I'm running low on paper. So I'll amuse you with more records.

_Nov. 16th 1929_

_Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute_

_Number: 75160B_

_Day: 03_

_Began water therapy. Patient restrained in water for three hours. 75160B expressed great anger at session. Left in tub for extra hour._

_Removed from session at 1:00 pm. Given shower to remove urine odor. Patient refused to attend lunch. Stayed in room for rest of the day._

_Day: 05_

_Scanned patient's brain wave patterns. Head Nurse Stockard monitored process. Placed electrode sensors under scalp. 75160B expressed violence during session. Restraints needed. No sedatives administered._

_Data showed sporadic brain waves. Schizophrenia diagnosis consistent was findings._

Those first days were hell. But I had no clue as to what horrors lay ahead. It wasn't just the agonizing "sessions". Behind these walls, I wasn't a person. None of us were. I still remember my old cell. A simple bed and barred window. I bet my old hand prints are still there. They gashed me up something bad that day.

I managed to find more paper. The electroshock room. Of all the sick places to store typewriter scrolls! The wires are dead now but they still make me feel ill. I also found one of the others there.

Gerta Furlou lay shackled to the table with a rubber bite-gag in her teeth. Her empty eye-sockets staring right through me. She died on that table.  
Vannacutt was in one of his experimental moods. How much electricity the human body could endure. Her eyeballs exploded five minutes into the session. 

Normally we don't see eachother. If it wasn't for their wails, you'd think I was the only one here. Gertie must really be lonely.

I first started hearing the voices when I was fourteen. All day long, they whispered demonic utterances. Filling my head with the most unholy thoughts imaginable. For two long years, I lived with these demons. At times they even revealed themselves to me.  
Flamion has no mouth and was covered in keloid scars. He told me to burn things. 

Moritz urged me to cut myself. His bleeding eyes gleaming whenever I slit my wrists. But Lin was the worst.

It was she who planted the abominable thoughts. She told me my mother had ripped my baby brother from her womb and baked him for supper. Because of Lin, I never ate anything my mother cooked again.

After I died, the demons never ravaged my mind again. It may have killed me, but I was finally cured.


	2. Chapter 2

_Nov. 20th 1929_

_Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute_

_Number: 75160B_

_Day: 08_

_Began Electroshock therapy. Straightjacket was needed to bring patient to session. 75160B kicked and screamed at the orderlies. Pliers were needed to insert bite gag. Administered 5,000 volts._

_Patient bucked wildly under electrical shock. Fractured right leg and dislocated shoulder. Bones were set and patient sent back to room._

_Day: 11_

_Patient showing signs of self mutilation. Tried slitting jugular vein but did not succeed. 75160B placed in Insulin coma for five hours. Nurse Stockard recommended placing patient on suicide watch. 75160B relocated to basement ward._

_Day: 13_

_75160B has not eaten in a week. Orderlies moved patient to cerebral hygiene room for feeding. Had to place tube down the throat to deliver protein solution. 75160B attempted to spit on nurse.  
Tube was placed lower in esophagus._

_Patient vomited blood an hour later. Decided to wait a week before trying again._

God that was awful. But that's the way Vannacutt ran things. You weren't even allowed to put yourself out of your own misery.

I thought the jugular vein would work. A cut on the neck, a few minutes of dizziness, slip into a coma and never wake up. Easy.

But that bitch Stockard caught me. Before I could cut any deeper, I was whisked off to the operating room for stitches.

The hunger strike was even less successful. I hate throwing up. But some of the Others were better at it then me. Mildred Harring loved to purge. She did it almost ten times a day. In her healthy days, she could have given Mary Pickford a run for her money. By the end she weighed less than seventy pounds. Her pretty mouth completely eaten away by her own stomach acid.

I saw her yesterday. She always stands in the foyer under that awful stained glass window.

_Nov. 25th, 1929_

_Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute_

_Number: 75160B_

_Day: 15_

_Patient still violent and delusional. Time in the saturation chamber recommended by Dr. Vannacutt. Straight jacket was needed in the transport. 75160B was very combative. Decided to extend the time by another hour._

_Three Hours Later_

_Patient was found in the corner in fetal position. The eyes were glazed and unfocused. Restraints were not needed._

_Day: 16_

_75160B remains in catatonic state. Does not move, speak, or react when stimulated. Dr. Jentzen recommended electroshock therapy. Patient bucked under the shock but catatonia remains._

_Day: 20_

_After extensive therapy, 75160B is still unresponsive. Cerebral scans indicate the brain is alive. Dr. Marr suggests a damaged area to the frontal lobe is the problem. The decision was made for the patient be prepped for surgery._

Even in my present state, I don't remember much of what happened next. I know Stockard drugged me, then I woke up. My head throbbed against the mattress. I had to move. I couldn't stay in my self-imposed death any longer. Carefully I ran a hand across my head. A long, cresent-shaped incision was held together with tight stitches. The flesh underneath felt hot and inflamed. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. Something was blocking my emotions. A cellophane-like film had coated my brain, making me feel numb and dull.

Vannacutt had ordered the final solution. If I couldn't be cured with electroshock or the chamber, my spirit had to be euthanized.


	3. Chapter 3

I wish existing in a fog would have been the worst of it. Anything was better than what happened next. While waiting for my consultation with Dr. Weaver, I felt something warm running down my cheek.

Blood!

The sutures had popped off and my wound was bleeding profusely. Perhaps it was the haze or maybe I wanted to die. But I let the blood flow. It made a good puddle on the clean tiled floor.

I giggled like a school girl all the way to the operating room. This time the wound was closed with staples.

I wanted to die so bad. Every night I wished and wished to leave this world behind. I hated what I had become. What they did to me. I wasn't Ellie Burrows anymore. They hollowed out my insides and left only the shell.

My wound had become grossly infected.

A hot swelling had formed next to the wound. I could feel the infected fluid coursing through my veins. A dull pain had set up occupation behind my left eye. At first it was just another inconvenience. But as the days wore on, the throbbing ache grew stronger. Instead of tears, my eye wept with pus. Fighting against the pain, I pulled myself to a puddle of fetid liquid in the corner of my cell. It was no mirror, but it at least gave me a chance to see my reflection.

My scream could be heard in all corners of the basement ward.

I didn't have an eye anymore. The organ had devolved into a cloudy, geletin-like mass between two grossly engorged eyelids. Seething with rage and frustration, I began to tear at my wrists with my own teeth. All the while, I begged to be taken out of the world. And I would have succeeded too if those damn doctors hadn't intervened. But I wouldn't let them heal me without a fight. Sometimes I see Nurse Detweiler. Her ghost still has the bite marks I gave her.

_Dec. 8th, 1929_

_Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute_

_Number: 75160B_

_Day: 25_

_Patient was extremely violent en route to operating theater. Extra restraints were needed. Steel halo was placed on subject to keep the head from moving. Since the flesh was necrotic, there was no need for anesthetics._

_The left eye, eyelids and the surrounding tissue was safely excised. The socket was packed with gauze._

That was it! The final straw! It wasn't enough for them to ruin my mind and destroy my spirit. No. They had to go and disfigure me as well. Even if I was released, there would be no way to hide my eye. I had become a monster. A creature not even Lon Chaney himself could create. I was furious. Fantasies about dying no longer amused me.

I wanted revenge!


	4. Chapter 4

There is one critical error Vannacutt and his staff did when it came to his patients. He underestimated us. Because we were no longer human, they felt our minds were too broken, too scrambled and too weak. But word was spreading.

For good behavior, patients were allowed to have their meals in the cafeteria. Though its hardly what I would consider a privilege. Somebody was always crying. Men and women sat before their meals with appalling injuries. Some were self inflicted. But a good many had been administered by the orderlies.  
It's little wonder most of us preferred to eat in our cells rather than face what Vannacutt was doing to us. But in the cafeteria, we were able to deliver our message more easily. Even the most catatonic inmates seemed to perk up at the idea of revenge.

To this day, I am still amazed at our ingenuity. Even in confinement, we managed to spread the word. Robert Kanon, another schitzo, came up with sort of Morse Code for us to use while in our cells. All through the night, we tapped against a pipe or the door.  
I owe my revenge to Robbie. Sometimes I still see him in the Cerebral Hygiene room. His broken jaw dangles from his skull like a grotesque wind chime. 

I suspect the staff knew something was up, but for the most part, they were blind to us.

All except Vannacutt.

As we sent eachother our hidden messages, the electroshock rooms were always in use. I should know. I got zapped five times. Parts of my scalp got so burned, hair never grew there again.

But it didn't matter. Nothing could stop us now.

As much as we tried to keep our operation quiet, some patients even more angry then me decided they couldn't wait any longer. Billy Bergren and some other thugs attacked a group of nurses on the way to their next shift. It was a gruesome scene, but nothing to write home about. The worst injury a nurses sustained was the loss of a few teeth.

Billy's revolution didn't last long. About ten orderlies showed up brandishing clubs and syringes. Vannacutt was quite pleased by the show of force demonstrated on his unruly patients. Their broken skulls made it all the more easier to perform lobotomies.

At first we were all angry about what happened. Mostly at Billy. If only he'd have kept his mouth shut. But in the end, you cant blame him. William Bergren wasn't what you'd call bright. After all, that's why he was admitted here in the first place.

After the failed revolution, The Vannacutt Hospital went on high alert. Every aspect of our lives was now under intense scrutiny. What little privileges we had were taken away. There were no more therapy sessions. Only electroshock, lobotomies, and any other form of torture Vannacutt could think up. But there was one that terrified me the most. Calling upon a contractor, Vannacutt added a new feature to his ghastly hospital. At the flick of a switch, steel plates closed down over every window and door in the building. This frightened me more than anything. If we took our revenge, there was no hope of escape. Win or loose, we would still be trapped inside this god forsaken place.

I relayed my fears in code to Robert.

"Are you saying you don't want to go through with this?" he tapped.

"No" I said. "I still do. But now may not be the best time."

"Remember what they did to you."

"It's too dangerous. We may never get out. And if we do, we'll be caught."

There was a long pause between our replies.

"We're not getting out, Ellie" he tapped. "But neither will they."


	5. Finale

Judgment Day had arrived. All afternoon we stewed in our cells, waiting for just the right moment to strike. The staff had to be caught completely off guard. So for much of the day, it was business as usual in hell. Unfortunately, this meant sacrificing one of our own to Vannacutt's whims. As punishment for the uprising, Billy Bergren became the subject of the good doctor's curiosity. Vannacutt wanted to study the internal organs of the insane. But he had grown bored of the many cadavers that kept piling up around here. No. He wanted to see the organs alive!

I watched from my cell as Billy was strapped down to a gurney kicking and screaming. His head jammed into a wooden vise. I couldn't bear to think of what they would do the poor imbecile. But Robert's tapping code reassured my shattered nerves.

"Just a little while longer, Ellie."

Jacob Burns made the first killing. While an orderly escorted him to the toilet, Jacob rammed a sharpened piece of scrap metal through the hapless man's throat. It was quick and surprisingly quiet. But orderly was stupid. Never trust a psychopath. Even when he's been on good behavior.

Keys in hand, Jacob released me and a couple other patients from their cells. But we weren't going to rebel just yet. We needed a distraction. That's where Philip Kilbride came in.

For the life and death of me, I cant imagine what they were thinking when the admitted Philip. A year younger than me, his only affliction was a violent case of epilepsy. Other then that, he was the most gentle and kindest boy you'd ever meet. And it was his placid demeanor that bought us some time to free more of our army.

With all the innocence of a child, Philip stood before the nurses station. A burly looking male nurse was getting ready for his shift. To drown out the wailing of the patients, he turned on the Victrola. Nurse Beebe had terrible taste in music. It made me pine for the days my family and I would sit around the radio listening to Big Band broadcast.

Agitated by his presence, Nurse Beebe looked up from sharpening his pencils to see Philip gazing at him from behind the glass. The poor boy wore a glazed smile one often sees in someone who's had electroshock. Seeing the Philip as harmless, the nurse paid him no heed and went back to work.

That's when we struck!

Nurse Beebe never knew what hit him. Jacob made short work of him with the help of Beebe's pencils.

With the nurse dispatched, Robert and I set out to release more patients. It was during this mission, I got my first dose or revenge. Just by chance, we ran into Dr. Marr. The very bastard that ordered the lobotomy that cost me my eye. With all the strength that comes from rage and madness, I tackled him to the the ground and stabbed him in the eye with the keys. Just thought I'd repay him the favor.

Before you get all holier-than-thou on me, know this. I didn't kill Dr. Marr. I didn't kill anyone. I left their deaths in the hands of patients who had been more scorned than I.  
I just wanted to take from them what they had taken from me.  
While I made my rounds about the hospital, I played a game in my head. How many nurses and orderlies I could blind in the course of our revolution. My favorite trophy came from Nurse Bowen. She had such pretty hazel eyes. Just like my left one used to be.

I don't remember much of what happened next. Everything sort of blends into a haze. The once orderly hospital quickly devolved into a vortex of chaos. Mobs of patients roamed the halls, claiming every victim in their path. And we would have gotten away had Vannacutt not pulled the switch. In the midst of this maelstrom, the death knell of the steel plates sounded throughout the building. We were all sealed in. But like Robert said, so were they. 

While the revolution roared on, some of the patients got into the hospital archives and set about burning the files. That was the final nail in the coffin. The fire spread quickly. It was as though the flames had been fanned by all our pent-up anger. I remember standing in the electroshock room watching that infernal device being devoured by flames. The inferno inching ever closer towards me. But there was no use in running. In that spot, I let the fire feast on me. I laughed and wept at the same time. My wish was finally being granted. Atlast I was allowed to die. At that time, I was so full of hope.  
I would be taken away from all this pain. In time, I could even be reunited with my family...

But this place had other plans.

The Vannacutt Hospital doesn't want to be alone. We are all it's trophies. A testimate of the sheer evil man can do to his fellow beings. As I sit here alone, I often wonder if people will ever come back here. The populace see the hospital as a curse that can never be lifted. And because of this, the building still stands.

But the world is changing. Every day, I stand in wait for someone to come back. To realize the full magnitude of what happened here. Maybe in the future, they will see what an awful blight this place is and destroy it once and for all. That is why I write these words. A ghost can use a typewriter, but we cannot tear down this hospital.

To anyone who finds these notes, please, burn this place to the ground! I want to go home. We all do. Be our angel and set us free.


End file.
